Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time you temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young and talented man with so sincere a feeling.
A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult, since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtation with a married woman means. But your ingenuousness, and your romantic, boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, and made me lenient toward you.
My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment of feminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it led me to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman's weakness and folly.
As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misused wife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for the recognition of an affinity.
Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, how acceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me.
And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning that we were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions.
There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man's unruly love for her, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard a lawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, and neglected, and hungry for affection.
See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs no romance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment.
Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget to pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover.
Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures and interests when it is possible.